Food Archives - 24 Hour Movie Marathon!

Movie Marathon Drinking Game

It is difficult to imagine something more ill-advised than playing drinking games during a 24-hour movie marathon. You think a night of drinking and a morning hangover is tough? Try combining those two things and adding no sleep on top of it. I’m not gonna lie: that sounds rough.

But, it does make you think: could you devise a set of rules for a movie marathon drinking game if you wanted to? Most of the movie drinking games out there are focused on one movie or a small collection of movies. How could you keep a drinking game going through a movie marathon that has a variety of movies?

I say: easy! Just be on the lookout for overused movie clichés. Movies are often a playground of recycled ideas, impossible physics, and overused tropes. You just need a watchful eye to spot them, and a drink in hand to take advantage of them.

Movie Marathon Drinking Game Rules

Take a Drink When Your Action Movie Has…

Characters that walk away from a giant explosion without looking at it.
A villain who decides to start a monologue when the hero is in his clutches
A single boss, computer, or spaceship that is blown up and renders an entire army of bad guys instantly useless.
A bomb that is defused with zero or one seconds remaining
A car that explodes after falling off a cliff, getting shot, or otherwise touched in any way.
The Wilhelm Scream
A character who throws away a gun like a used napkin when it is out of bullets
A Mexican standoff, wherein three or more characters, engage in a duel.

Take a Drink When Your Horror Movie Has…

A car that fails to start when the character really needs it
A character trying to use a phone, but there is no reception / dial tone
A character who falls to the ground when running from a threat
Something totally scary is coming, here it comes, it is going to be really scary – oh it is just a cat.
A character who movies a bathroom mirror and suddenly sees A SCARY THING BEHIND THEM!
A character bitten by a zombie who decides not telling anyone is the best way to go
A character who asks: “Is anyone there?”
A REALLY LOUD JUMP SCARE SOUND

Take a Drink When Any Movie Has…

A training montage.
A homely character who becomes sexy the minute they remove their glasses
A kiss between the love interests…interrupted at the last possible second.
A character who is definitely, totally dead and defeated…until they aren’t.
Hidden keys located right next to where they are used in the most obvious hiding place imaginable
An air vent any character of any size can crawl through to get anywhere in a building
Rain at a funeral
An inspiring speech that motivates the good guys / sports team.
A dying person who gives an eloquent speech for his last words
Someone knocked unconscious due to any mild blow to the head
Falls from a great height but are ok since they landed in water
A computer system that is quickly hacked by looking intently at a screen and pressing buttons fast
A computer is used to magically resolve a problem (solve a crime, defeat the enemy) because computers can do anything.
The big revelation that it was all a dream.

Movie Marathon Drinking Game Further Reading

Photo by @wewon31

Caffeine for Movie Marathons

You need caffeine for movie marathons, and lots of it. Sure, you know what beverages are the tastiest, but which delivers the most stimulants for your dollar? And how much can you drink before it kills you? The website Caffeine Informer has the answers to these important questions, and more.

When planning your next movie marathon, you need to consult my movie marathon food checklist first. The checklist has recommendations for what type of caffeinated beverages you should offer, and more. But if you want to know how much caffeine is in those drinks, you can look them up at the Caffeine Informer’s caffeine database. You can browse the list or look up drinks by name. I like to use the sorting feature to rank all known sodas by their relative caffeine content.

My latest favorite soda is Pepsi Max. It supplies a little extra jolt compared to your run-of-the-mill Diet Coke. The caffeine database confirms that Pepsi Max has twice the caffeine (69 mg) as Coca-Cola Classic (34 mg), but about half the caffeine as Mountain Dew: Game Fuel (121 mg). Very informative!

Knowing the relative amount of caffeine in a drink is helpful, but what is safe? The caffeine calculator can tell you! The calculator tells me that my safe limit of Pepsi Max in one day is about 3 liters, and that drinking 70 liters would kill me. Now there’s some handy advice! Speaking of death, Caffeine Informer also has an article about the deadliest caffeinated products available. Impressively, a packet of pure caffeine powder can kill 13 healthy adults. Pro tip: you might want to avoid this product at your next movie marathon.

To further educate yourself, the site has helpful science articles, such as how the human body processes caffeine and how your caffeine sensitivity may vary from others.

Stay awake and stay safe! Happy drinking!

Movie Marathon Drink Tip: Homemade Icees

I usually focus on the food for movie marathons. Pizza, popcorn, chips, desserts, yum! But what about drinks? Everyone has had every type of carbonated colas before. Isn’t there anything special you can serve up for the perfect movie marathon drink? There is one iconic movie theater beverage I can think of: ICEEs!

Don’t have an a ICEE machine? Well good – you shouldn’t – they don’t even rent them for home use! Instead, check out this recipe for homemade ICEEs. Since it only involves Kool Aid, ice, and some seltzer water, I think even I could handle it.

Still not convinced? Take the 40-second YouTube tutorial on how to make an ICEE.

Movie Marathon Food Tip: Always Order the Largest Pizzas

NPR did an analysis and demonstrated that buying the largest size pizza is almost always a better deal than the smaller sizes. This piqued my interest, since movie marathon food should always include pizza as its cornerstone, but I have never before bought the largest possible pizzas.

So I thought I’d do an analysis and see what I would save. Let’s use the prices and sizes of my local pizza place as an example. The large, 14 inch (the size I always order), cheese pizza costs $11.85. The extra-large, 18 inch, cheese pizza costs $14.55.

I’d have to order 1.7 large pizzas to get the same amount of food as one extra-large pizza. If I could somehow order 1.7 large pizzas, it would cost me $20.15. That means I save $5.60 every time I buy an extra-large compared to the equivalent amount of large pizzas.

That adds up for a 24 hour movie marathon! At my last two marathons, I ordered six large pizzas. Let’s assume I paid at least $71.10 for those pizzas. I could have ordered 4 extra-large pizzas for $58.20 instead. That would have me saved $12.90 on my bill, and I would have had the equivalent of 6.8 large pizzas. In other words – I could have been getting almost one more pizza’s worth of food for $13 less!

In the past, I’ve ordered large pizzas for two reasons:

It let me to easily order a variety of pizzas with different toppings
It gave me an easy point-of-reference, since I usually order large pizzas, and I had a good idea of how many large pizza slices people would eat.

For the future, I think I’m going extra-large for some great savings!

Notes:

There was one counter-point to the original NPR story – don’t buy that much pizza if it’ll go to waste. Point taken.

Making Movie Marathon Popcorn

My father-in-law handles making movie marathon popcorn. My popcorn making skills start and end with the use of a microwave. He used some kind of apparatus to pop it on the stovetop, but I never paid close attention to how he was doing it. I’ve since learned that he was using a whirley popper, and that whirley poppers are regarded as one of the best ways to produce movie-theater quality popcorn at home. This sounded like a promising area of movie marathon research. What would a movie marathon be without quality popcorn.

Basic instructions are not hard to find. An instructional video is available on YouTube and the Whirley-Pop makers have some written instructions. It looks pretty easy! I’m impressed at how fast it is too. I want to try it myself, so I put in an order whirley pop popcorn kit.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

UPDATE: 25 March 2017

Thanks to Andy for his detailed comments about his home popcorn-popping experience! I did indeed purchase the whirley pop, and I had all the supplies I could want from my local popcorn supply store. Costco also sells large quantities of popcorn kernels. My use of the whirley pop has had its highs and lows:

High point: I used the whirley pop and a portable single-burner stovetop to mass-produce popcorn for about 30 people at my office as a fun get-together for my project team. The popcorn was popular and it was easy to make. Note: I paid less than half of what the linked model is currently going for – shop around!).

Low point: I like salt. No, I really like salt. I found over time that I tended to use too much. Maybe not too much for me, but too much for other normal human beings like my wife. I’m not much of a natural chef, so I don’t think I took full advantage of experimenting with different mixtures of seasonings. Eventually laziness took over, and Amazon Dash gets me a crate of popcorn with a press of a button.

So, for better or worse, my whirley popping days are now dormant. Perhaps someday I’ll back to the mad science of making the perfect movie marathon popcorn.